Evil-erizon

zaitcev comments on Verizon's EV-D0 service and its TOS, which basically seems to read as "Hey, buy our broadband mobile data service, but don't try to actually transfer any data over it or we'll shut you off."  (He also mentions that the service itself has a one-year minimum contract with abusively excessive early-termination fees.)

Is it just me, or are they, like, missing a basic point here?  Like, say, people who buy a high-speed data service are going to expect to use it for high-speed data transfer?

Oh yeah .... Skates.

We picked up a new set of inline skates for Goose's upcoming birthday from Building #19 today (that's "logical today", i.e. Saturday), and upon some thought, I went back and looked at the selection of sizes available .... and they went all the way up to men's size 13.

"Hmmmmmmm," I thought.  So I opened up a box of 13s, pulled all the orthotic inserts out of my left shoe, inserted them and my foot into the left skate (the little toe hurt like the devil going in ... it's going to have to go), and found that I could not only get the skate on, I could get my foot under me and a little bit past.

So then I tried doing the same for the other skate.  And I was hellishly wobbly, but I could, however uncertainly, skate -- even though my knees were aching badly after just once up and down the aisle.  So now I have a new set of inline skates too.  I don't think, unfortunately, they're adjustable for rocker, but I may be able to come up with a way to do that (slightly smaller wheels at front and back would do the trick, for instance).  And I'd better get pads, of course ... I suspect I may be falling down a lot at first, and I'll probably need help to get back to my feet at first, and if I go down on my knees, it's going to hurt.  I'm going to have to buy some more orthotic inserts to put in them, too, because fighting the inserts in and out of them is a royal pain.  But I think they're going to work, which means I should have a way to get some decent exercise and (with luck) build up some strength in my knees.

Deranged? Genius? I vote "possibly both."

yndy linked to this page (the first of ten -- scroll all the way to the end of each page for links), with the notation that the kid is either brilliant or deranged, and possibly both.  I'm leaning strongly towards "both".

Highlights include a Roman arch of monitors as the "next page" link at the end of the first page, an animated fractal tree, and a lengthy sequence on hyperbolic space including a projection of cubes in hyperbolic space.

(I was going to inline the first two behind cuts, but decided I'm just not willing to expend the required stress, frustration, and weeks off my lifespan required to bludgeon Semagic into doing it without having to manually repair the HTML at least twice after Semagic predictably fucks it up.)

A big fat hardware raspberry

...to whoever manufactured the floppy drive in vorlon (I haven't bothered pulling it out to check whose it is).  Hint to manufacturer:  It is indeed an excellent idea to use a keyed IDC34 connector on the floppy drive (as you should, and most manufacturers now do) to make sure the data cable is plugged in with the correct polarity.  However, it rather defeats the purpose of the keyed connector if you use a connector that has key cutouts on both sides, allowing the cable to be connected either way up -- and this is ESPECIALLY true if the obvious orientation, using the naturally intuitive orientation of the cable and the visible key cutout, is in fact the wrong one.

(Of course, I should add as a footnote that I've seriously considered removing the floppy drive from the machine altogether, as I'm not sure I can clearly remember the last time I actually used a floppy.  It's probably indicative of how little I actually need a floppy drive that it's taken me from when I assembled vorlon up until now to get around to checking and correcting the orientation of the cable... of course, it's also indicative that it's been this long before I had a floppy disk handy to test and verify the correct orientation with.  I'm sure there's probably more useful things I could use the two exposed floppy-sized bays in this case for.)

Why should you care about "Real ID"?

CNET reports:

President Bush is expected to sign an $82 billion military spending bill soon that will, in part, create electronically readable, federally approved ID cards for Americans.  The House of Representatives overwhelmingly approved the package -- which includes the Real ID Act -- on Thursday.

Why is this in a military spending bill?  A very good question, and one with a simple answer which CNET doesn't hesitate to point out:  "Because it's difficult for politicians to vote against money that will go to the troops in Iraq and tsunami relief."

Further down the same article, find the following observation from Rep. Ron Paul of Texas, the only consistently pro-freedom vote in Congress:

Paul has warned that the Real ID Act "establishes a national ID card" and "gives authority to the Secretary of Homeland Security to unilaterally add requirements as he sees fit."

Reading this, I could not help but wonder:  What happens to you if you're for some reason unable to meet one of the conditions the Secretary of Homeland Security feels is reasonable and appropriate as proof of identity for the purpose of obtaining a national ID card?  Suppose, for instance, that there is no birth certificate on record for you, or the record has been lost or never entered into any filing system anywhere from which you can obtain a copy.  Do you get deported?  Do you become a non-person, unable to obtain employment, use any government services, use any public transport, get medical care?

Ron Paul has this to say:

Supporters claim it is not a national ID because it is voluntary. However, any state that opts out will automatically make non-persons out of its citizens.  The citizens of that state will be unable to have any dealings with the federal government because their ID will not be accepted.  They will not be able to fly or to take a train.  In essence, in the eyes of the federal government they will cease to exist.  It is absurd to call this voluntary.

And:

It re-defines "terrorism" in broad new terms that could well include members of firearms rights and anti-abortion groups, or other such groups as determined by whoever is in power at the time.  There are no prohibitions against including such information in the database as information about a person’s exercise of First Amendment rights or about a person’s appearance on a registry of firearms owners.

And he closes his comments with:

Why are we punishing Americans by taking away their freedoms instead of making life more difficult for those who would enter our country illegally?  (Emphasis mine)

H.R. 418 does what legislation restricting firearm ownership does.  It punishes law-abiding citizens.  Criminals will ignore it.  H.R. 418 offers us a false sense of greater security at the cost of taking a gigantic step toward making America a police state.

I think Ron Paul's very valid question needs a public answer from President Bush, and when I say "an answer", I don't mean "vague, mealy-mouthed blathering about national security that uses the specter of terrorism as a bugaboo to distract attention from the fact that he hasn't actually answered the question."  I mean an ANSWER, straight out, without any euphemisms, dissembling, or jingoistic rah-rah-rah.